[MCN] MarketWatch: Forests fall to build wrong kind of homes

[Lance Olsen]

MarketWatch Published: Dec 14, 2017

We’re still building the wrong kind of homes for renters <https://www.marketwatch.com/story/were-still-building-the-wrong-kind-of-homes-for-renters-2017-12-14>
Several years into a rental boom, most of the homes being constructed are still for higher-income Americans, leaving millions behind.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/were-still-building-the-wrong-kind-of-homes-for-renters-2017-12-14 <https://www.marketwatch.com/story/were-still-building-the-wrong-kind-of-homes-for-renters-2017-12-14>

Excerpt
Demand for rental homes soared in the years after the recession, as homeownership remained either out of reach, unappealing, or both, for many Americans.

But even as the skyrocketing increases in rental households finally slacken, a new report confirms that the tilt toward constructing rental properties for high-income Americans is leaving far too many renters behind.

In the recent construction boom, “much of this new housing is targeted to higher-income households and located primarily in high-rise buildings in downtown neighborhoods,” wrote researchers at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in their annual America’s Rental Housing report <http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/americas-rental-housing-2017-interactive-tools>.

The median asking rent for new apartments increased 27% between 2011 and 2016 in real terms, to $1,480, the Joint Center noted. Households would need an income of at least $59,000 to afford these new units and not be “rent-burdened.” Actual median renter income was $37,300 during that time.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/were-still-building-the-wrong-kind-of-homes-for-renters-2017-12-14 <https://www.marketwatch.com/story/were-still-building-the-wrong-kind-of-homes-for-renters-2017-12-14>

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"For decades, we called it ‘global warming,’ an innocuous-sounding phrase invoking a gentle increase in worldwide temperatures, like turning up the thermostat in a house.”

https://www.seas.harvard.edu/content/from-sea-to-rising-sea-climate-change-in-america

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